Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcomes

About ECHO

About ECHO

Leveraging the data from existing, longitudinal cohorts helps to support approaches that can evolve with the science. ECHO capitalizes on the growing number of clinical research networks and technological breakthroughs in pediatric research to investigate the effects of a broad range of early environmental exposures — including physical, chemical, biological, social, behavioral, natural and built environments — on child health and development.
ECHO cohorts will look at existing data to test and analyze their project's hypotheses. These hypotheses prioritize the five key pediatric outcomes that have a high public health impact:

Pre-, Peri-, and Postnatal

Child Obesity

Airways

Neurodevelopment

Positive Health

Other areas of focus include policies and practices—for data sharing, harmonization, and analysis; use of biospecimens; publications; and engagement—that will drive best practices for conducting Team Science in the 21st century. Read the ECHO Program's Guiding Principles here.

Program Components

NIH has established the essential components of the ECHO program to support multiple, synergistic longitudinal studies of mothers and children. ECHO extends and expands upon existing cohort studies to determine the factors that influence health outcomes in children, from conception to early childhood.

The ECHO Coordinating Center is the central site responsible for organizing and managing activities and logistics for all collaborative components of the initiative, including oversight and coordination of the multi-cohort study design, evaluation of the process, and tissue sample storage.

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